Only eight Fine Gael TDs who responded to a Sunday Times survey said they are opposed to further liberalising Ireland’s abortion laws. The Sunday Times surveyed the party’s 69 TDs of whom 48 responded. According to the newspaper, “Thirty-one of the respondents said they wanted to widen access to abortion. Eight were opposed to any...
Education Minister Jan O’Sullivan says she envisages ‘marriage equality’ being taught to primary school children as part of a new course dealing with ethics and world religions. In an interview with The Sunday Business Post, she said: “I haven’t seen the curriculum yet but I would imagine that it will look at the factual situations...
The Minister for Education has been criticised by fellow Government politicians following her complaint that some families feel compelled to baptise their children so as to secure a school place for them. In an interview with The Irish Independent newspaper, Minister Jan O’Sullivan of the Labour Party responded to earlier comments from Dublin’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin who, in defending faith schools,...
Northern Ireland’s Alliance Party is to require all its candidates for the 2016 Assembly elections to openly back same-sex marriage. Setting out its stall for the forthcoming elections, the party said it would make legislating for gay marriage part of its manifesto for the first time, and will require party members to “adhere to it”....
Dublin’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has said local resistance is one of the reasons why the hand-over of some Catholic schools to other patron bodies is so slow. As the issue of Catholic Church patronage of schools comes once again under the media spotlight in the run-up to the new school term, Dr Martin stated: “Communities don’t...
Pope Francis has called on American Catholics to defend traditional marriage amid ongoing cultural attacks on the institution. In a letter to the Knights of Columbus as the Catholic body convened for its Supreme Convention in the state of Philadelphia, the Pontiff re-emphasised the importance of the Sacrament of Marriage as “a natural institution, a life-long...
A Catholic Bishop in England has called on the faithful there to become actively involved in lobbying against assisted suicide. Addressing English pilgrims to the French Marian shrine at Lourdes, Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury called on Catholics to lobby their local political representatives ahead of the debate on assisted suicide legislation in Parliament this...
A British Conservative MP has said new anti-extremism powers should be used against Christian teachers who teach that that same-sex marriage is wrong. In an article carried by The Daily Telegraph, Mark Spencer, MP for Sherwood, Nottinghamshire, is quoted, in an email to a constituent, as suggesting that new‘Extremism Disruption Orders’ (EDOs), formulated to curb jihadi radicalisation in Britain, should also be...
Newly agreed United Nations Sustainable Development Goals will make no mention of abortion or gay rights including gay marriage, despite strong lobbying by some nations. Following protracted negotiations towards the final content of ‘Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ by which the UN will operate its development activities worldwide, UN member states agreed...
A court in the US state of Washington has ruled that pharmacists do not have a right of conscience on the issue of dispensing so-called ’emergency contraception’ which can also act as an abortifacient. In Ireland, pharmacists are already denied this right. The ruling, by a three-judge panel of the Circuit Court of Appeals, overturned...
